Chapter 12
THE RAPE OF CAENIS
Not the immortal gods can flee,
nor the men who live only a day.
Who has you within him
is mad.
SOPHOCLES,
Antigone1
Over the Earth he flies
and the loud-echoing salt-sea.
He bewitches and maddens the heart
of the victim he swoops upon.
He bewitches the race of the mountain-huntin
lions and beasts of the sea,
and all the creatures that Earth feeds,
and the blazing sun sees—
and man, too—
over all you hold kingly power,
Love, you are the only ruler
over all these.
EURIPIDES,
Hippolytus2
One of the myths of ancient Greece tells of Caenis, “loveliest of the maids of Thessaly,” who, while walking alone on an isolated shore, was spied by Poseidon—god of the sea, elder brother of the king of the gods, and sometime rapist. Mad with lust, the god attacked her on the spot. Afterwards, he took pity, and asked what he might give in reparation. Manhood, was her answer. She wished to be transformed into a man—not just any kind of man, but one extravagantly male, a warrior and “invulnerable.” Then she would never again be subjected to such a humiliation. Poseidon agreed. The metamorphosis was completed. Caenis became Caeneus.
Time passed. Caeneus fathered a child. With his sharp and expertly wielded sword he killed many. But the swords and spears of his adversaries could not penetrate his body. The metaphor here is not hard to fathom. Eventually Caeneus became so full of himself that he scorned the gods. He erected his spear in the marketplace and made the people worship it and sacrifice to it. He insisted, on pain of death, that they worship no other gods. The symbolism is again lucid.
Extreme arrogance, of which this is a fair example, was called by the Greeks hubris. It was almost exclusively a male trait. Sooner or later it would attract the attention and then the retribution of the gods—especially toward those humans insufficiently deferential to the immortals. The gods craved submission. When news of Caeneus’s effrontery finally reached Zeus, whose desk was doubtless piled high with such casefiles, he ordered the centaurs—chimeras, half-man, half-horse—to execute his merciless judgment. Dutifully they attacked Caeneus, taunting him: “Do you not remember at what price you gained this false appearance of a man? … Leave wars to men.” But the centaurs lost six of their number to Caeneus’s swift sword. Their lances bounced off him “like a hailstone from a roof.” Disgraced at being “conquered by an enemy but half-man”—a hollow complaint, coming from a centaur—they resolved to smother him with timber, destroying vast stands of trees “to crush his stubborn life with forests for our missiles.” He had no special powers concerning breathing, and after a struggle they managed to subdue and then to suffocate him. When the time came to bury the body, they were amazed to find that Caeneus had reverted back to Caenis; the invincible warrior had become, once again, the vulnerable young woman.3
Perhaps poor Caenis had overdosed on the stuff that Poseidon used to effect the metamorphosis. There is a proper amount of whatever it is that makes one male, the ancient Greeks recognized, and too much or too little can get you into trouble.
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The testicles of a sparrow are about a millimeter long and weigh about a milligram. (That’s one of the reasons you never hear that someone’s hung like a sparrow.) With testes intact, the scrappy birds enter into their mainly linear hierarchy, chase away other birds who invade their territory, and, if they’re high-ranking, make successful overtures to fertile females. But reach under those feathers, remove those two tiny organs, and, after the bird has recovered, all of these traits are lost, or nearly so. Aggressive birds become submissive, territorial birds become complacent about intruders, passionate birds lose interest in sex. Now inject a certain steroid molecule into the sparrow and it regains its plucky enthusiasm for sex, aggression, dominance, and territoriality.
Shortly after castration, male Japanese quails stop strutting, crowing, and copulating. They also fail to elicit the interest of female Japanese quails. Treat them with that same steroid and they’re back to strutting, crowing, and copulating, and the females find them irresistible once more. Castrate a young male fiddler crab and he will never develop his distinctive asymmetrical giant claw.
Humans have understood some of this for thousands of years. Captured warriors were castrated so they’d make no trouble. We still describe an ineffective leader as a “political eunuch.” Chieftains and emperors castrated men so they could guard the harems without succumbing to temptation (or at least—the compromise sometimes reached—without impregnating any of the residents); and so their loyalties to the leader would not be adulterated by family ties or other distracting affections and obligations. It is remarkable that almost exactly the same molecule should produce such fundamental changes in behavior in sparrows, quail, crabs, and humans.
The steroid molecule that works these transformations like some wizard’s potion is testosterone. Along with other, similar molecules, it’s called an androgen. It’s manufactured (from, of all things, cholesterol) mainly in the testicles,4 enters the bloodstream, and induces a complex set of behaviors that we recognize as characteristically male. Here too, the connection is acknowledged in the language, as in the expression “He’s got balls”—meaning he’s shown exemplary courage and independence, he’s not a coward or a sycophant.
In newly formed groups of male monkeys, the higher the rank in a forming dominance hierarchy, the more testosterone is found to be circulating in the blood. But when the hierarchy settles down to symbolic encounters, and betas are routinely submitting to alphas, the correlation vanishes. The more testosterone an animal has, the farther away he’s willing to roam to challenge and dominate potential rivals.6 With high testosterone levels there’s a cross-species tendency for dominance within the group to be extended to dominance over a piece of territory. The boss and the landlord become one.
In the brains of many animals are specific receptor sites to which the testosterone molecule and other sex hormones chemically bind, and which are in charge of hormone-induced behavior. There may be separate brain centers responsible for strutting, crowing, bullying, fighting, copulating, defending territory, and fitting into the dominance hierarchy; but each center has a button pushed by testosterone. The behavior is actuated once the testosterone migrates from the testicles through the blood to the brain. In the individual brain cells, the presence of testosterone activates otherwise untranscribed and ignored segments of the ACGT sequence, synthesizing a set of key enzymes. As with many hormones, testosterone is at the nexus of an array of positive and negative feedback loops that maintain the concentration of the molecule circulating in the blood.
Male animals don’t just endure, but seem to delight in, testosterone-mediated scuffles, intimidation, and combat. Mice will learn to run a complex maze when the only reward or reinforcement is the opportunity to have a tussle with another male. There are abundant similar examples in our species. Activities that are central to leaving many offspring tend to be entered into with enthusiasm. Sex itself is the most obvious example. Aggression is in the same category.